Wednesday, September 17, 2008

A friend of Chris has a blog about her experience as an evacuee from Galveston.

One of the most surreal pictures I have seen is this one:

On the Galveston seawall, which kept back the worst parts of the storm surge, Ike sheared in half the plaque on the statue of victims of the 1900 storm who are raising their arms in mourning. The 17-foot seawall was built after 6,000 people died in that turn of the century hurricane, the deadliest storm in U.S. history, the newspaper reported.

the same location on a beautiful May day

the usually calm waves........

We go to Galveston several times a year, we live less than an hours drive away, and I hope that they will be able to restore and rebuild. There are so many beautiful houses and historic buildings, it is so much more than just a popular tourist destination.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Made it through my first big hurricane since I've been living in Texas. We lost power about 11pm Friday night and we had at least 12 hours of strong winds and rain, except for about 2 hours in the early morning when it was calm and the eye of the storm was right over us. It was scary but we were very lucky compared to some people and did not have any damage to our house, and just 2 trees down in our backyard and some damage to the fences. We had our dog in the utility room and our cat in our bedroom, and we all slept in the den and Chris had the twin matresses propped up against the windows. The kids slept through most of it and Chris and I were mostly awake listening to the wind and the pines cones dropping on our carport roof.

Saturday when the wind calmed down Chris repaired the fence some and we worked on cleaning up some of the debris in the front, and we drove around a little to see some of the damage in our area, and to see Chris' parents. They live in a new neighborhood and one of the houses under construction in the framing stage had just collapsed.Saturday night was so hot in the house with no power so today we decided to come out to San Antonio and find a hotel for a couple of days. The kids will be out of school until at least Wednesday, but maybe longer depending on how long it takes for power to come on. Chris works in a chemical plant and it is shut down at the moment. I don't know how the area around my school fared in the storm - there are a lot more trees out there than near my house, so I can only assume it was very bad. Before we left Thursday we moved all the furniture away from the windows, so we have a lot of things to put back in place when we get back.

But for now it was nice to have a hot shower and be in AC and have my wireless internet connection :) If we hear home still does not have power in a couple of days we are going to try and find a generator somewhere out here to take back home.I'll post some pictures later in the week when we are back home and things are getting back to normal.

Damage is very bad to Kemah and Galveston and some of our favorite places, so some things will never be the same out there.